Deathblade: A Tale of Malus Darkblade Read online

  Tz’arkan staggered back, the daemon’s arrogance and audacity faltering as it now saw dozens of spears exactly like the one that had pierced its side. With grim determination, the druchii warriors formed a ring around the monster, hemming it in with a fence of steel. The daemon howled and roared and raged; threats that would have chilled the hearts of vampires slithered off its tongue. The warriors remained unmoved, determined in their purpose: to hold the beast for their mistress.

  ‘You cannot escape,’ Absaloth’s rasping voice declared.

  Tz’arkan fixed the Voiceless One with a murderous stare. ‘I smell your magic, witch,’ it snarled. ‘Show yourself! Let Tz’arkan treat with the master, not the plaything.’

  Drusala stepped out from the broken corner of a wall. She knew it was a reckless thing to do, foolish and stupid. She could deal with Tz’arkan without exposing herself. But the fiend’s words had crawled their way into her mind, nagging at her pride. She suspected some enchantment behind that vexation, the sort of wearisome magic the daemon had used so often to manipulate Malus.

  The daemon snorted derisively when it saw Drusala. ‘You played your game, little one, but there is no time for games now. Tz’arkan is made flesh once more. Tz’arkan is free!’ Its blazing eyes smouldered with grotesque mockery, its forked tongue licked lasciviously at its withered lips. ‘Perhaps I would allow you to be my slave. If you beg. And it amuses me.’

  The sorceress could feel the daemon’s mind wearing at her, trying to play out her pride, trying to make her forget her schemes and plans. Trying to make her give herself over to the impulses of emotions rather than the calculations of knowledge.

  ‘You fear me,’ Tz’arkan accused.

  Drusala smiled coldly at the monster. ‘I think it is you who are afraid.’

  Tz’arkan started to laugh at that, but it grew quiet when it saw Drusala wave her hand. Some of the spearmen raised their weapons and stepped out of formation, opening a passage for her into the cage that held the daemon. As she walked through the line, there was nothing in her step that bespoke uncertainty, not the slightest flicker of hesitancy on her face. Even when her warriors closed the ring behind her, she didn’t stray.

  The daemon’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. There was a trap here, but try as it might, it couldn’t ferret the nature of that trap from Drusala’s mind. Her magic was too powerful to penetrate; all it could do was try to exploit emotions that were already there, and even this had failed it. Exploitation and manipulation end with the target’s awareness.

  ‘Who are you?’ Tz’arkan hissed, offended that any mortal sorceress should have such power to resist it.

  ‘That is the wrong question,’ Drusala told it.

  Tz’arkan bared its fangs, streams of venom dripping to the ground. ‘What, then, is the question I should be asking?’

  ‘You should be asking me what I want,’ Drusala said.

  The daemon laughed. For all the arcane power she possessed, for all her mystic knowledge, this flesh-worm was no different from any other mortal. She wanted a pact, some petty agreement between them. What would it be? Wealth? Power? Love? Revenge?

  The sorceress answered her own question in a voice that was like a razor. ‘I want Malus.’

  Tz’arkan glowered at her. ‘Darkblade is gone. There is only Tz’arkan now.’

  Drusala slowly circled the hulking daemon, like a lion stalking game. Tz’arkan had made a mistake trying to manipulate her through her pride. It had forgotten that the channel worked both ways. Without the daemon appreciating it, she was playing upon its pride, provoking it with every breath. The angrier it got, the less it was aware of what else she was doing to it.

  ‘You shouldn’t lie,’ the sorceress chided Tz’arkan, stepping around the gory husk of a Chracian hunter. ‘I know he’s still there, inside you. You wouldn’t destroy him so quickly. Not when you could make him suffer.’

  The daemon took a lumbering step towards her. ‘Would you like to join him?’ it threatened. ‘All eternity as Tz’arkan’s captive audience.’

  Drusala continued to circle the daemon, gingerly picking her way between its victims. ‘Is this how you use your freedom? Petty massacre? The great daemon king Tz’arkan, nothing more than a maniac with pretensions of grandeur.’

  The daemon lashed out at her, nearly striking her with the warpsword. ‘Your mind of flesh can’t conceive what I am. In your blackest nightmares, you couldn’t imagine the tenth part of what Tz’arkan is!’

  Drusala leapt away from the enraged daemon. As Tz’arkan rushed at her, the fiend stopped short, thrust back as though it had struck an invisible wall. The beast snarled as it made a gesture with its claw. At once a scarlet circle blazed into life all around it, the circle Drusala had been furtively drawing with her foot as she taunted the daemon.

  ‘This won’t hold me,’ Tz’arkan mocked. ‘The merest effort and I shall be through. Then I will peel your body like a piece of fruit and feed you your own skin. I wonder how long you’ll have the strength to scream.’

  Drusala set one hand on her hip and actually laughed at the beast. ‘You think that circle is the only magic I have worked upon you? Would you like to hear your True Name? It is neither long nor complicated as such things go. A half-brute witch doktor could learn it.’

  Tz’arkan roared, the daemon’s fury of such malignance that stones crumbled from the battered walls, corpses shivered on the ground. ‘I will–’

  ‘You will do nothing!’ Drusala sneered. ‘Or I will say that name. I will send you back.’ Her voice became even more threatening as she recalled an image she’d found while she rooted about in the daemon’s putrid essence. ‘How do you think your brothers will greet you when you return? How will they thank you for leaving them scratching at the door when but a gesture from you could have ripped the barrier open? That should be an amusing spectacle.’

  The daemon quieted, its burning eyes fading into black pits. ‘What do you want?’ it demanded in a sullen voice.

  Drusala was wary, making no mistake of trusting Tz’arkan’s seeming acceptance of defeat. ‘I want Malus,’ she repeated.

  ‘You can’t have him,’ Tz’arkan growled. ‘I am free. Do you understand me, free!’

  ‘Soon you will be free among your brothers in the aethyr,’ Drusala said.

  An inarticulate cry of impotent fury shook the daemon. It knew the battle was lost. But one battle didn’t lose a war. ‘You can have Malus back,’ the beast hissed, ‘but you can’t have him without Tz’arkan. Our essences are too entwined to be separated. Where he goes, I must follow, otherwise it is death for us both.’

  Drusala nodded. She had expected as much. Indeed, it was vital to the revision her plans had undergone that she have both Tz’arkan and Malus Darkblade.

  ‘Bring back the drachau,’ she commanded the daemon. ‘Restore your prison of flesh.’

  ‘Shall I tell him who it was that killed his mother?’ Tz’arkan asked, expecting to horrify the sorceress with a secret only a daemon could learn.

  Drusala glared back at the fiend. ‘If you did that, I’d be obligated to kill Malus. Then you’d lose your anchor. You’d have to go back to your waiting brothers.’

  Hissing profanities to disgust the most jaded ear, Tz’arkan cast the warpsword from its hand. The weapon landed blade-first beyond the circle. For a heartbeat, Drusala’s eyes glanced over at it. In that brief span, Tz’arkan rushed the sorcerous circle holding it. Wisps of colour exploded in every direction as the daemon burst through the circle. It charged at Drusala, intent on ripping her head from her shoulders before she could invoke its name.

  Before Tz’arkan could reach her, however, the daemon was forced back, its body pierced by the spears of the Ghrondians. The silent Absaloth stood before his mistress, sword in hand, directing the warriors to push the daemon back.

  At once, Tz’arkan sank to its knees. Its final,
desperate effort had failed. Before Drusala could retaliate, could use its True Name against it, the daemon hastened to appease her. It would give her back Malus… And it would wait.

  As Tz’arkan shrieked and howled like a creature damned, its monstrous frame began to collapse in upon itself. Slabs of daemonic flesh oozed away, dropping to the earth in stinking heaps. Horns crumbled into powder, spines snapped off and evaporated into smoke. Inch by inch, the daemon was melting away, each transformation bringing it a little nearer to the size and shape that had constrained it for so very long. As Tz’arkan withered away, so too did the warpsword shrink, taking back its original proportions.

  Agony nearly beyond endurance had heralded Malus’s transformation into Tz’arkan; now the same waves of pain coursed through him. As the daemon receded, as it restored his flesh to him, he could feel every pop and grind of his shrinking bones, experience the ghastly reshaping of muscle and tendon, the emergence of organs from the black broth of Tz’arkan’s substance.

  When the change was complete, Malus lay strewn upon the ground, unable to move, steam rising from his naked body. It was torture to even breathe; he had to concentrate to make his heart beat inside his chest for the first few moments, until the rhythms of his body restored themselves. He could sense Drusala’s magic flowing through him, the sorceress helping guide back his mind and soul, acting to maintain his shattered body until its restoration was complete.

  Around Drusala, he could see Absaloth and the Ghrondians. The spearmen stared at him in shocked disbelief, unable even now to accept that their general, the Tyrant of Hag Graef, had been the hulking daemon they’d fought. Malus grimly wondered why Drusala had bothered to restore him. With so many witnesses, there wasn’t a chance of keeping the secret now. When the Witch King learned of this, he’d have Malus executed on the spot.

  ‘Dead tongues spread no rumours,’ Drusala said, reading his thoughts. Throwing both hands wide, she sent a tide of dark energies sweeping through her soldiers. The druchii stumbled and staggered as the dark magic entered them. They dropped their spears and drew the short blades on their belts. Then, in pairs, they drove their daggers into one another. The suicidal massacre was as complete as it was swift. Before a minute was out, only Drusala, Absaloth and Malus remained to bear witness to the drachau’s secret.

  ‘You needn’t worry about Absaloth,’ the sorceress said, motioning for her bodyguard to lift Malus from the blood-soaked ground. ‘The only thoughts in his head, the only words in his mouth, are those that I put there.’ She raised her hand and stroked Malus’s cheek. ‘We are going to be firm allies, Malus.’

  Deep inside him, Malus could feel the last flicker of Tz’arkan turn cold. In as much as it was able, the daemon had abandoned him to the sorceress.

  FIFTEEN

  Malus moved through the carnage of the battlefield, pale and wraithlike in his nakedness. A bloodied cloak, ripped from the corpse of one of Tz’arkan’s victims, was the only raiment he’d had time to adopt. Except for the Warpsword of Khaine and the icon of Hag Graef he wore about his neck, he was without accoutrements. The daemon’s release had shattered his armour and destroyed his clothes. Drusala’s spell to re-cage the monster had left Malus as bare as a babe. There hadn’t been time to worry about propriety and modesty, however. He had to hurry if he wanted to save something more important than his dignity.

  His own skin.

  The Witch King himself had come to the Eagle Gate and Malus knew the dreaded tyrant would be expecting the drachau to present himself. Every moment of delay would only further provoke the despot’s ire. Malus had to plead his case, make Malekith appreciate that he was still a valuable asset in the conquest of Ulthuan. Otherwise, he knew his head would be joining those of the asur lords decorating the battered walls.

  Malus found his king just outside the broken fourth wall. Malekith was in conference with some of his lords and generals, poring over the maps pinned to the side of a dead cold one. As he tottered out from the shadow of a battered gatehouse, Malus was spotted by Kouran. The warrior favoured the drachau with an ugly smirk, and then hurried to draw his king’s attention away from the improvised table and towards the nearly naked elf.

  With an effort, Malus forced his head back and strode towards the king with such pride as his exhausted body could muster. The nobles gathered around Malekith whispered and pointed as he came shambling through the ruins, but it wasn’t long before the whispers rose into open jeers and taunts. Even the harpies feasting on the corpses scattered amidst the rubble snarled and snapped at him. The columns of druchii soldiers marching into the captured fortress turned their faces towards him and laughed as they trooped past, delighted to see the high-handed Malus brought to such distress.

  Each barb only served to enflame the boundless hate within the drachau. He drew upon that hate, using it to pour strength into his weary bones. He returned the taunts and jeers with a defiant arrogance that made many of his detractors choke on their laughter, suddenly appreciating just how injudicious their humour was.

  Kouran stepped forwards as Malus approached the Witch King, the captain of the Black Guard closing his hand about the Crimson Blade. The drachau stopped his march when he was twenty feet away from the king, far enough away as to not provoke the uncertainty of either the despot or his hound. Malus could imagine the fearful sight he must present, his body riddled with scars and stained in blood, only the gore-soaked cloak to cover his nudity. If he were in Malekith’s boots, he would be wary. It was the lone fanatic, crazed and determined, who was the greatest threat to any tyrant.

  The Witch King stepped away from his maps and cast his gaze over the drachau. ‘You are alive,’ he said. ‘Mostly.’

  Malus dropped to his knee, bowing before his monarch. ‘Mostly alive, your majesty,’ he said. He could see the wariness on Kouran’s face as he addressed Malekith. To ease some of the warrior’s doubt, Malus thrust the warpsword into the ground beside him, the blade trembling ever so slightly as he withdrew his hand from its hilt. He dismissed the warrior from his mind and returned his attention to Malekith.

  ‘Please forgive my tardiness, Lord Malekith. I was otherwise engaged during yesterday’s triumph and could not share your victory.’ Malus bowed his head as he made his apology, but he could hear the druchii nobles drawing closer, savouring this display of contrition and weakness, eager to see what would happen next. Jackals waiting to pick at a corpse, should the Witch King reject the drachau’s apology.

  It took all of Malus’s willpower to fight down the fear that filled him as the Witch King walked towards him. Like a prowling lion, Malekith circled him. He could feel the despot’s suspicious gaze burning against his skin as the king studied him, marking every scar and blemish on his body, trying to read on his flesh the record of his recent battle. If the Witch King guessed even a small part of the truth, Malus knew the last thing he would feel was the Destroyer stabbing into his body.

  ‘Tell me, Malus,’ the king’s voice came in a low growl from behind the drachau, ‘what could be so important as to delay you from my council?’

  Malus tried to restrain the fear that swelled within him. He shifted his head, trying to catch some sight of the Witch King, the faintest suggestion of what the despot was doing. He strained his ears for the slightest sound that might warn him that the Destroyer was in Malekith’s hand.

  ‘Alas, majesty, I was so enthralled by the song of Khaine that I pursued the fleeing foe far down the pass. It is only this dawn that I returned.’ Malus wished he could see the Witch King so he could know how favourably his lies were accepted.

  ‘You were overcome by bloodlust?’ Malekith asked, a trace of scorn in his tone.

  ‘That is true, majesty,’ Malus replied. The story had been concocted by Drusala and he’d been too exhausted by his ordeal to fabricate a better one. Now he wondered if trusting the sorceress hadn’t simply guaranteed his own destruction at the hands of the Wi
tch King.

  ‘And you pursued the enemy so vigorously that it took you all night to return to us?’

  Malus swallowed the knot that was growing in his throat. His bare back shivered, anticipating the Witch King’s blade stabbing into his flesh. Malekith wasn’t buying his lies. Even so, Malus knew there was nothing to be gained by abandoning the bluff.

  ‘Which enemies did you pursue with such vigour, dear Malus?’ the Witch King demanded.

  Terror was racing down Malus’s spine, raw despair pounding in his heart. Malekith was suspicious. A moment more and he would draw the Destroyer. Malus glanced over at the warpsword, wondering if he could reach it before either Kouran or his king could cut him down.

  ‘I believe they were Ellyrians, your majesty.’ Drusala emerged from the crowd of nobles who had gathered to watch Malus squirm under the Witch King’s interrogation.

  The drachau wondered if the highborn fools around her understood the power Drusala embodied. He could bear witness to the awesome might of the handmaiden. Only his mother, Lady Eldire, had ever been able to subdue Tz’arkan, and that had been with the daemon in a far less powerful state than Drusala had encountered it. How she had managed such a feat, how she had been able to not merely subdue the daemon but force it to restore his physical body, Malus couldn’t begin to comprehend. He’d felt his own mind collapsing into a shrieking mire of horror and pain, but Drusala had called him back. She’d sewn his essence back together, made him once again who he had been.

  Such power didn’t make Malus grateful; it made him worried. He’d been forced into an alliance with Drusala. Why? What did she hope to gain from him? What was it only the Tyrant of Hag Graef could bring to her?